Privacy Of Insolvency Practitioners: Comparative Analysis Of UK (GDPR) And India (DPDP Act, 2023)
- IJLLR Journal
- 5 hours ago
- 2 min read
Ishan Mankotia & Mr Sheheen Marakkar
Abstract
Therefore, in this paper, a comparative legal analysis will be performed between the privacy rights and responsibilities of insolvency practitioners (IPs) in India under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) and Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) against the Insolvency Act 1986 and the maintained GDPR of the UK. With digital assets increasingly taking over the current Corporate Insolvency Resolution Processes (CIRP), IPs have access to extensive personal datasets - creditor PAN/Aadhaar information, employee databases, customer databases, etc. - to verify claims, value them, and decide upon resolutions, tensions emerge between the disclosure requirements of IBC (Sections 15, 18, 25) and the fiduciary obligations of DPDP (Sections 4-12), which are fiduciary in nature.
The review shows that DPDP, with its inflexible use of legitimate uses, lack of the sectoral guidance and strong minimization, conflicts with the IBC transparency requirement, as opposed to GDPR whose lawful bases are flexible (legal obligation, a legitimate interest), ICO advisories on insolvency and judicial clarity (Southern Pacific, 2014). UK IPs have strong rights to refuse DSARs/erasure, disclose data to creditor committees and rely on forensic audit, cushioned by tests of proportionality, whereas Indian Resolution Professionals are helplessly exposed to compliance paralysis, data breach and delay in operations under vague exemption.
The major obstacles are consent infeasibility, conflicts between confidentiality and transparency, and excessive burdens of small IPs. The proponents of comparative insight recommend moderated reforms: joint IBBI-DPBI rules that affirm insolvency exemptions, compulsory DPIA, anonymous disclosure, and RP training to align frameworks without undermining the recovery of creditors.
This paper talks about comparison between the privacy rights and responsibilities of insolvency practitioners (IPs) in India under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) and Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) against the Insolvency Act 1986 and the maintained GDPR of the UK.
Keywords : Privacy Insolvency, Data, Protection , Creditors
